Category: The Lifestyle

There are so many things that I learn about and add them into my daily routine and then I forget that everyone else doesn’t already know about them too so I wanted to share this amazing concept 🙂

Seed cycling! The idea is that RAW seeds, freshly ground, have so many amazing health benefits and if you use certain seeds at different times of your cycle, it will help to regulate your hormone levels.

My daily routine includes a smoothie for either breakfast or lunch. I use a magic bullet for my smoothies. The smallest container that comes with it and the flat blade is our seed grinder. This keeps things simple for us. The regular blade is then washed and left out to dry so it is always ready to go when we are. My frozen berries are perfect for not adding sugars. These are approved for low FODMAP diet as well as almost every other book I have read on the subject of good things to not sabotage your day. You want to avoid sending your blood sugar levels on a rollercoaster so try to avoid banana, mango, pineapple, grapes and most other fruits when using

Fresh ground seeds! Sesame and Sunflower shown here

The finished product! Delicious!

a smoothie as a meal. If you want a sweet treat, you could add those fruits but be aware that they must be eaten in moderation.

Also in this picture is whole flax seeds, whole raw pumpkin seeds, frozen strawberries, frozen blueberries, unsweetened coconut milk and my Shaklee Vitalizing protein. This is part of days 1-14. My seeds will change to sesame seeds and sunflower seeds for days 15-28.

I hope this information helps give you relief from your hormonal symptoms. It sure has helped me!

Despite what the food companies want you to believe, being gluten free is not a fad and it is NOT UNhealthy. Quite the opposite. You are NOT eliminating all carbohydrates from your system, you are just eliminating one particular food. Now, if we just stopped eating bread that will not change your exposure to wheat. The first thing you need to do is start reading labels. DO NOT WORRY ABOUT FAT AND CALORIES! Read the INGREDIENTS! Start to learn what is in your foods. The more you can eat whole foods, the better! Wheat has been added to everything from ice cream to soups as a filler or thickener and very cheaply. People with Celiac disease will even notice the wheat added to makeup and shampoo! It is everywhere because it is so cheap to use and it does the job.

Soy products

This one is tricky because soy is not a bad thing if you get it from a good source. This is another subject that has mixed opinions. Soy has been genetically modified and if you watch some of the documentaries, you will hear about farmers who have been forced into using these genetically modified crops and neighboring crops being exposed to the patented seed and then forced into signing a contract to also grow the genetically modified soybeans.

My point is, if you use a quality soybean, it will not cause you to have cancer, high levels of estrogen or any of the other scary side effects that soy is known to cause. Look for Non-GMO labels. Again, you HAVE to read labels. I will not buy pasta sauce, for example, if it contains soybean oil. This is not the same soy as my high-quality Shaklee protein shake that I eat on a daily basis.

Splenda(artificial sweetener), Sugar and high fructose corn syrup

Always avoid artificial sweeteners! Please stop putting the chemicals in your body….think about it. This goes right back to my posts about not cleaning with chemicals. Your body can’t detox the toxins if you continue to add them to your system. That Diet Coke may not cause the disease but it is not helping your cells to repair and defend themselves.

Sugar and high fructose corn syrups should be avoided on a regular basis so that you don’t yo-yo all day long. Try to avoid the sugar so that you don’t crash an hour or two hours after you eat. There are delicious foods you CAN eat like Strawberries, Blueberries and Raspberries in your morning shake. Stevia is another sweetener alternative. I always buy an organic variety and mainly only use it in my morning coffee.

Dairy

I know, I know, you are thinking, “If I can’t eat anything with gluten in it and now I can’t eat dairy, what’s left?” This one is a struggle for my family. We drink almond and coconut milks in our smoothies and when we need milk for cereal or a recipe. But cheese and ice cream are another story! We try to buy coconut and almond ice creams but they are so expensive! I am hoping to get an ice cream maker so that I can do this myself 🙂

So no milk or ice cream. Try to take it out of your daily routine. No yogurt, sour cream or cottage cheese either. If you want to have a little cheese, go for the hard cheese. Our bodies are not made to drink “mother’s milk” as an adult. Milk was intended for the young to drink from the mother because as a baby you need the hormones and the fats to grow. If you have noticed that you are gassy or have bowel issues, it could be that you are lactose intolerant. Once you remove dairy you will notice some amazing changes in your digestive system!

Eggs, Peanuts and Corn

JJ Virgin covers a section in her book for each of the 7 foods that I have listed in this post. She says to avoid any and all of these foods for the 21 days to detox them from your system. I did it and I know how hard it is to avoid them. Just so you know, these 7 foods are the most common food intolerances so if you feel like you have tried everything and nothing is working, then it is time for you to really look at what you are eating and put it on a calendar. Mark your 21 days and buckle down on all of the foods I have listed. Get JJ’s book and the cookbook that helps give you more food ideas. I have put our favorite recipes in this blog but they don’t necessarily avoid corn or eggs and they also may contain cheddar or parmesan cheese 🙂

I do avoid the peanuts! I don’t know exactly why, but with my mold allergies, peanuts are very likely to be covered in mold, so I avoid them. I used to grab them as a go-to snack and I really do think it made a huge difference when I stopped eating them regularly. I LOVE cashews and almond butter 🙂

The first thing I want you to do is STOP COUNTING CALORIES! I am not saying that you should eat 5,000 calories a day, but I already know that if you are trying to lose weight or “eat healthy” you are probably trying to keep your food intake at more like 1,000 calories a day. Stop starving yourself and start looking at WHAT you are eating.

“Your body is not a bank account or a calorimeter. It is a chemistry lab. Eating the wrong foods affects your body’s chemistry. Stress and lifestyle changes affect your body’s chemistry. So, if you want to get that extra weight off, you have to heal your body’s chemistry.” From JJ Virgin’s The Virgin Diet: Drop 7 Foods, Lost 7 Pounds, Just 7 Days

When I read Wheat Belly by William Davis, MD, he gives example after example of how we look today versus how things used to be. He explained that we really aren’t eating differently now but we are all gaining weight and have more and more health issues. The foods have changed. The ways that our foods are being grown and produced have changed. The technologies that have been discovered to produce more and cut costs are at the expense of the public’s health. Unfortunately, according to Dr. Davis, the wheat that is being grown has not been “genetically modified” so whether is it organic or conventional(grown with pesticides), ALL WHEAT PRODUCTS will hurt your gut. Some of us can handle it better that others or at least we think our bodies aren’t feeling the affects. The ways that food affects us, can be very different. There are huge lists of symptoms that could be a result of foods that your body can’t process.

The Wheat Belly book had me convinced that I did not WANT to eat anything with gluten and my husband needed to stop eating it to lower his cholesterol numbers. So, we took the plunge because there was no reason not to try it! I can tell you that it was definitely a learning experience that I hope to help you through! Another part of this journey is understanding that you are addicted to certain foods. It is just part of how our body processes things. Sugar and gluten are just as much of an addiction as nicotine or alcohol. There are withdrawal symptoms that come with taking wheat out of your system. You will crave those crackers and the bread! That is all the more reason to avoid it….you.are.addicted!
There is a withdrawal process and as your body detoxes you will probably not feel well, but keep going! I promise, your body needs to pass all of the toxins at a cellular level. Your body has been holding on to toxins for so long and when they are released, your body will change shape. Just remember that when you are feeling a little under the weather.

Both authors of these books have lots of great information and I highly recommend reading their books. They also have cookbooks available!

The purpose of my blog is to get all of my thoughts organized so that they are accessible to anyone who is looking for support in making a lifestyle change. I LOVE learning new things and trying to make it all work for our family.
I started this journey little by little and I like to think that we are pretty balanced in how we live. We are not extreme in our lifestyle, rather, we find that middle ground in our eating, spending, etc.
After I began to see the benefits of taking a good quality vitamin, I also was paying close attention to the quality of our food. The information was out there and I wanted to do the best I could for our family. We watched the documentary Food Inc. and my husband and I were appalled. We were your average Americans that were completely oblivious to how our food is grown and processed to serve for human consumption. That was a huge wake-up call and, being new parents at the time, I knew we could never look back. The foods we ate needed to get better.
Now if you are like us, you don’t have the money to just revamp your entire pantry. We had to start small. Avoid using a lot of processed food, buy organic fruits and veggies, avoid poor-quality meats like Tyson and Smithfield(shown on Food Inc.).
As I had said, this was only the beginning of our journey. In other posts I explain how to make this easier. Do the best you can with what you have and make goals for yourself to make changes as you go. I am here to help!

There are so many reasons to consider what you are cleaning with! When I was pregnant with my oldest son 7 years ago, I was reading all of the baby books and some of the info was so foreign to me. I came across some info about cleaning with chemicals and that by me touching anything to my skin I was transferring it to my child! WHAT!? This was totally crazy to me. Why didn’t I know this before and what was I doing to my unborn child??? I was freaking out and immediately wanted to find something to use that I felt good about. That weekend I went to a bazaar and saw someone selling Shaklee. I would have walked right by and not even noticed what she was selling but I was on the hunt for cleaning products. I took home a bottle of Basic H2 and a pack of bottles. It was awesome! I was happy with my purchase and life went on doing the best that I knew how and trying to change my eating habits, etc until my little bundle of joy was born.

The rest of my Shaklee story didn’t begin until almost 2 years later! THAT is how long my bottle of cleaner was lasting and about the time that I started considering finding a vitamin to take now that I was no longer needing my prenatal vitamins prescribed by my doctor. I will save that part of my story for another day 🙂

The real dirt on clean.
You know that good, healthy feeling you get when you’ve just
cleaned house? Sorry to spoil it, but you may have just made
your home dirtier.
Think of it this way. You wouldn’t let your kids play with toxic
chemicals, so why would you let the baby crawl over a floor that’s
just been wiped with them? That’s much more dangerous than the
orange juice that was just there.
How dangerous? Just take a look at these statistics.
• Over 90% of poison exposures happen at home.
• Common chlorine bleach is the #1 household chemical
involved in poisoning.
• Organic pollutants, found in many common cleaners and
even air fresheners, are found at levels 2 to 5 times higher
inside your home than out.
• A person who spends 15 minutes cleaning scale off shower
walls could inhale three times the “acute one-hour exposure
limit” for glycol ether-containing products set by the California
Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.
• Common cleaners give off fumes that can potentially
increase the risk of kids developing asthma, the most
common chronic childhood disease.
• 1 in 13 school-aged children has asthma. Rates in children
under five have increased more than 160% from 1980 – 1994.
• Children are highly vulnerable to chemical toxicants. Pound
for pound of body weight, children drink more water, eat more
food, and breathe more air than adults. The implication of this
is that children will have substantially heavier exposures than
adults to any toxicants that are present in water, food, or air.
• If your home is anything like the average U.S. home, you
generate more than 20 pounds of household hazardous waste
each year (the EPA designates toilet cleaners, tub and tile
cleaners, oven cleaners, and bleach as hazardous waste).